W520 - Should I risk it?

I've been researching new laptops and enjoyed the build quality (and thinkpoint!) enough that I'd like to stick with the brand. I had all but decided to pick up the W520 4276-37U when I stumbled across the official Lenovo forums and the shutdown issues people were complaining about. Seeing that has given me some serious second thoughts and I just wanted to see if anyone had an idea as to just how prevalent this problem is. Is it just a small minority of W520 owners or is this something that is more wide spread?

I'm just a bit hesitant to buy an expensive laptop and then having to deal with the thing turning off on me in the middle of whatever I'm doing.

 

Your question will just get random responses. Pro and con. You won't get an empirical answer.

Do your homework, start here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/566338-lenovo-w520-owners-thread.html

I love mine, zero problems in 3 months.

 

I haven't had any real problems, and I got this machine in late April (shipped to my place in mid-May).

 

Regarding the prevalence, only Lenovo knows that and their knowledge is going to be limited to service requests which may not represent the full picture.

If I were guessing, I would say the percentage is low single digits but that can still add up to quite a few machines. The W520 is a popular model. We have thousands in my company.

There has been no huge outcry at my company internally. If the sudden death issue was prevalent on a large portion of the machine (say 25%), then the outcry would be fierce. We're a vocal bunch.

If you roll the dice and something shows up in the initial return period, exercise your rights. After that you would probably need to fight pretty hard for a replacement after 8 weeks. I say 8 weeks because although my W520 had the issue, it would only rear it's ugly head at 6-8 week intervals. It was still unnerving enough for me to get rid of the machine and order new one. The second machine arrived DOA. I returned that.

I will wait for Ivy Bridge now.

 

Food for thought. Loaded Envy 15 with IPS screen, backlit keyboard, Quad core, and other goodies.

Coupon NBT3886 for 30% off.

 

Although the Envy 15 has IPS, it's apparently not as great in color production, so you're just getting viewing angles at the cost of reduced transmittivity (and hence, lower brightness and/or battery life).

 

I'm more concerned about the cooling capacity of the Envy machines, the HP consumer lines are not renown for their thermal engineering and the earlier generation of Envy machines struggled quite badly on that front...

 

The image in the thread is of the Envy 17, which does not have an IPS display. Interesting that the panel isn't of as high quality as the old Envy 14 Radiance panel.

Same. That and the Envy's non-removable battery may be its largest weaknesses. We'll also have to see how its battery life fares.

 

I'll risk it. It can't be any worse that the screens on the 13 and 14" ThinkPads. We'll see how it looks compared to the mighty W5x0 FHD screens. And yea, if it's a portable heater it will be returned fast.